There you are, at the end of months, even years of toil, ready to release your research into the world. You have checked and rechecked your facts, you have interrogated the robustness of your argument, the work has been reviewed. Every T is crossed and I dotted. You have even gone to great lengths to write an first-rate policy brief, one you are sure will knock the socks off the policymaker who will take your research on its journey into policy and, ultimately, practice. You are set to go. That simple.

Science journalist Lynne Smit (who presented the module on social media at the Science Communication short course in Stellenbosch, South Africa) has written an excellent guide for SciDev.Net on digital tools that can be used to better communicate research. She covers topics from how to gather ideas, to organising your research, finding sources, new ways of publishing research, using audio, video and photos, and fact checking. She also explains which tools are appropriate for which tasks. I highly recommend this article.

The work DRUSSA does with its 24 partner universities is groundbreaking. It focuses on building capacity for Research Uptake (RU) and its management (RUM) in two ways, firstly by finding ways to support capacity at organisational level at these universities, so that each university finds ways to arrange its structures and resources to accommodate and advance

In academic life, researchers and scientists, along with their institutions, face two tasks. The first is to generate new knowledge and the second is to turn this knowledge into products and services that can add value to the lives of the end users. The first is easy, because generating new knowledge is what scientists do and what sets them apart. It is with the second task that problems arise. This is because new knowledge generators do not always have the experience to communicate or transfer new knowledge effectively and on target. This article consolidates earlier blogs on knowledge transfer and Research Uptake strategies. I also include my latest Science, Research Uptake, Communication and Utilisation model as it appears in my book currently in press.

Who doesn’t love a good story? Stories grab our attention and intrigue us. It often holds the power to change our mind about something. But did you know that the use of strategic storytelling is based on science? Research has shown that people make decisions based on emotion, not rationality, says Brett Davidson, director of the Health Media Initiative of the Open Society Foundations in New York.

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